During cancer surgeries, one of the important concerns is to determine if there are satisfactory surgical margins around the cancerous tissue. Ideally, the surgeon would like to remove all of the tumor, with adequate margins around the cancerous tissue, but without taking out too much of the healthy surrounding tissue. Typically, after the lesion is surgically removed, the tissue is sent to a pathology lab to determine if the margins around the cancer are sufficient. This process can take 20-30 minutes or more to get a confirmation that the tumor has been excised and that there are adequate surgical margins. During that time, the surgeon(s) must wait for confirmation. If the margins are not adequate, this process may be repeated several times before the surgery is concluded, adding substantial idle time to the surgery. For the patient, the time lost during this process results in increased time in surgery and extended exposure to anesthesia, which can result in increased morbidity. Increased surgical time can also lead to overall increased costs for the procedure.
It would therefore be highly desirable to have a method and apparatus for rapidly determining if adequate cancerous tissue resection has been made and adequate surgical margins allowed during surgical procedures for the removal of cancerous tissue.